Healthy Anger

“Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."
- Yoda

Yes, I know, I am letting my closet nerd peer out a bit. But, as a forever nerd of the Star Wars genre, I've always been curious about the whole dark side thing when it comes to anger. As a law enforcement officer, we're trained when we get into a life or death fight with a bad guy, you must do anything to survive. If you've been shot and see yourself bleeding out, what would motivate you more to get through it: thinking about the fact that you're dying or get pissed off about what this guy did to you? Anger can give you the edge and strength to survive.

It's mentioned that anger can be a positive in this situation because it can drive you to survive and not to give up. I've taken and taught women's self defense classes before and anger, again, can be an extremely endearing trait in a deadly situation. Anger can help you pull out that last little bit of inner strength that you have left (or didn't know you had) to fight back against the attacker and get you through it. There have been numerous stories of personal survival (lost in a snowstorm, trapped in a cave-in, etc) where a person is physically beaten down and wants to give up their life because it feels too hard to continue. But it's the anger that awakens them out of that self defeating mindset to keep fighting to live.

What about competitive anger? For those that thrive on physical competitition, think about when you're in a race, ride, etc, and you've hit that mental wall that makes you feel like you don't want to keep going? You're body is exhausted and is screaming at you to quit the insanity. For some athletes, they have to dig deep to find the determination to push their body to continue. And sometimes the determination begins as anger, with the mind telling the body "F#@! you, there is no way we are going to quit!"

A little dose of healthy anger can also help a person stand up for themselves in a situation where they feel wronged. If a person is initially too shy or polite to confront the situation, angry feelings are useful to motivate the confrontation so issues can be discussed and hopefully resolved.

The "dark side" comes into play when a person is angry a lot over practically everything (we all know someone who falls into this category), and lets their anger bottle up without letting it out in positive ways. Anger can generate bitterness, depression and pessimism, which can affect the person negatively throughout their life if they don't recognize it.

I believe anger does get a bad rap at times, and can have a useful place in our lives. But beware of the dark side of anger as well - it can consume you if you let it.

One last Yodism on the subject: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”